


Time Heals

by Curt_Kenobi



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood and Gore, Dean's shitty coping, Gen, Hell Flashbacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Season/Series 04, fresh outta Hell!Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-08-13 18:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7982413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curt_Kenobi/pseuds/Curt_Kenobi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time <i>doesn't</i> heal all wounds. Sometimes, it encourages them to fester.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Heals

**Author's Note:**

> [originally from Feb 2011]

_\-----I-'l-l---p-a-i-n-t---i-t---o-n---t-h-e---w-a-l-l-s--/--'c-a-u-s-e---I-'m---t-h-e---o-n-e---a-t---f-a-u-l-t-----_

  
  
“ _Time heals all wounds._ ” That’s what they say. That’s what he keeps telling himself. “Time heals all wounds.”  
  
It’s bullshit. Time doesn’t heal; time dulls, time fades.  
  
Makes you forget the details in hypersensitive, vivid technicolour and THX Dolby surround.  
  


_(Like the raw burn of a throat screamed hoarse on his brother’s unanswered name….)_

_Like the feel of the metal or leather bruising – biting –_  
_breaking through flesh, probing – sliding –_  
_sawing through the flimsy barrier and beneath it._ Inside _it._  
_The blossom and gush of blood. …_  
_The fragility of internal organs – how easily they give under pressure –_  
_squishing within an ever-tightening vise-grip_  
_...until they expire with a wet pop and splash, like a childhood water balloon._  
_…The grind and crack and_ snap! _of bone…_

_A taunting smile, like a razor-edged gash, offering…. Follow it down  
...and shred the tatters left of your soul asunder, the damnation a clanging gate rewarding the cave of acquiescence, of_  
“Yes.”

_The still, cold burn. How it stung and stabbed initially_  
_…until it started to seep in._  
_Until you didn’t notice at all._

All of this…before you, done to you…done by _you._ It's there, etched, scarred, burned. No soap can wash it away. Nothing can cleanse it. Can cover it. Mask it. It's indelible.

\------------------------------

  
He’s been out of Hell a nice minute – he

_(refuses – won’t)_

doesn’t keep a count.

_(He did that enough before going in.)_

And, as “time heals,” he doesn’t recall his forty-year stint like it’s happening in real-time anymore. Just details now, instead of

 _(lurid sense memory – sensory_ overload _)_

living flashbacks – war-story worthy to the _n_ th degree.  
  
But it’s not like that anymore. Because _time heals._

_Except…_

It doesn’t, though. He’s lost the waking reality of Hell, the recollection of every second spent down there. The details are fading in time, like scars – yeah. …But with every precise memory that fails him, his mind wastes no time compiling a _could-have-been._  
  
Sure, it’s not exactly what happened, some of what his mind conjures up, but he did _so_ much…. Who’s he to say?

...Maybe it really did happen. Maybe his mind’s not exaggerating.

After all, it _was_ Hell; it’s all quite possible. 

_Mewling like a bitch, broken._  
_Taking up the blade like he was made for it._

"Good boy."

 _Blood and gore like wine as it splashed upon him,_  
_showered him in his true colours,_  
_while he showed his true form,_  
_in his true element._

He said _“Yes.”_

_Maybe it should have happened._

Honestly, is it anymore than he deserves? Anymore than he's worth? Is he -- Dean Winchester -- really supposed to believe he's better than what he has to know he did down in the Pit? 

_...Maybe it was worse._

_Maybe that's what's true._

Time does _not_ heal all wounds.

It lets you make worse ones.

**Author's Note:**

> (Lyrics in the page break are from "Breaking the Habit" by Linkin Park)


End file.
